A large Japanese entertainment agency benchmarking K-pop... “Introduction of BTS training know-how”

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Kim Byeong-gyu = Avex, one of Japan's representative entertainment agencies, is attracting attention for improving its constitution by benchmarking Korean K-pop.

On the 6th, the Nippon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) introduced in an article titled ‘Avex, transformation by bringing in BTS’ leading figures’ that Avex, which was struggling in the changed music market environment, benchmarked the strategies of Korean entertainment companies.

The newspaper explained, "Avex, which had suffered from poor performance, adopted 'creating intellectual property rights (IP) and entering the global market' as a growth strategy like large Korean entertainment companies," and added, "As a result, operating profit improved significantly from a deficit of 1.8 billion yen last year to a surplus of 4 billion yen last year."

Avex, which was the agency of major singers such as Namie Amuro and Ayumi Hamasaki, made a name for itself as a large agency representing J-pop in the 1990s with huge hits in album sales and live performances, but continued to struggle due to the global popularity of K-pop in the digitalized record market environment.

Meanwhile, a breakthrough was found in the seven-member girl group XG, which debuted in 2022. For this group, a K-pop style business model was adopted that places the main stage of activities overseas, forms a fandom in North America and Europe, and collects profits overseas.

Shun Tanaka, a stock analyst, explained, “The fact that XG, which had invested in advance for a long time, entered the recovery phase had a big impact (on turning a profit).”

Nikkei also noted that Avex is challenging the transformation of its business model with the producer who discovered BTS.

The company established 'Rii.MJ', a project to nurture next-generation artists, with producer Kim Min-jung, from Hive, and created the group VIBY. Producer Kim is known to have discovered BTS and Tomorrow by Together (TXT) at Hive.

VIBY, a boy group made up of Japanese members aged 15 to 19, aims to build a fan base in Japan and then grow into artists who will be active internationally. Like K-pop idols, world tours, music sales, and merchandise sales are viewed as major sources of revenue.

Even before their debut, VIBY showed their practice and training camp in Korea and the process of aiming to perform at Budokan (a large concert hall) through documentaries on Internet TV and social media.

Producer Kim told Nikkei, “We will combine the strengths of Japanese culture and fandom with artist development know-how in Korea.”

Nikkei explained, “Avex is aiming for re-growth by focusing on nurturing artists that will be successful on the world stage and publishing rights business.” However, “Competition in the boy group market, which includes VIBY, is fierce, and the gap between Avex and rival companies such as Korea is also large.”